Presentations - Cyber Security

I decided to make a blog post on the group that presented cyber security. Cyber security has been really interesting to me, and it's actually the area I'd like to work in for my future job. I decided to present on a different topic because I already know a lot about cyber security and I wanted to explore something new. Despite this, I was actually surprised to have learned a decent amount from the presentation. I think was due in part by the fact that each group member could take a different approach to the large umbrella categories that we chose. I was interested to hear that the first virus was called a worm and began on Arpanet. Then, of course, came the email viruses which launched cyber security into what it means today. As it was mentioned by the presenters, the demand for cyber security will constantly grow and grow and most likely will continue to do this throughout our lifetimes, in any foreseeable future. When one presenter brought up the idea of webcam hacking it reminded me of a time when I actually decided to explore the very thing. After poking around in areas of the web that I'm not even sure should exist, I was able to see through everything from street cameras likely there to show the weather, to classrooms of students in other countries, to seeing out of the webcam at a desk in somebody's house. Although I hate the idea of looking through random cameras around the world I think the only reason I explored them was because I was so amazed that it was so easy to do and public for anybody to see. The only other thing that stood out to me was the idea of flash drives being used as hacking tools. To me, it seemed like something you may see in a movie or maybe a kid from my middle school would bring some basic script file to run on the school computer in order to call himself a "hacker", but I hadn't really considered it to be a serious threat.

What Makes a Community - Can Technology Provide What it Takes?

To me, there are only a few things that are essential for a community. The first is people. There needs to be a group of some intelligent (or at least somewhat intelligent) beings for a community to form around. For our purposes, human beings will be those living beings. The next is communication. There needs to be some way for those beings to understand that there are other beings that exist. The communication doesn't even necessarily have to be complex. The last thing is some kind of reliability between the living beings. I believe there has to be some common ground. This can be a similar interest, a cultural connection, or anything along those lines. With all of these things together, we're able to have a community. Say there's a group of people living in a neighborhood. They can be a community since they are a group of human beings, able to speak to each other, and their common ground is the fact that they live in the same area. Now, take a group of people who, for example, all see online that there is a concert going on in their area. They can all meet up regularly at the concerts and their common ground could be that they all enjoy the same artist playing at the concerts. In this situation, did technology create the community, or did it simply help the creation process? What if there's a group of people who log on to a video game's forum site. Many people post topics and talk with each other daily. Here, we again have a group of human beings communicating with the common ground being they all play or are interested in the same video game, except this community exists purely online. I think this is a great example of how technology can provide what it takes to create a community, and as you can see, its not much different than a community outside of technology.

Dot.Com to Dot.Bomb - My Thoughts

It seems that as the world wide web began, it was thought to be a ground breaking invention. People were excited about its existence and what it could be used for. Although, it quickly became a grounds for competition. Just like advertisement on radios and over television, the internet became an additional place for competing companies to battle for control over the consumer market. Because of this, many companies began and many companies ended. Fortunately, a lot of the companies ended because they were bought out and re-branded or re-purposed into something new. Essentially, many companies and businesses were spawned, some ended but many merged, and we ended up with the big names we have today, such as Microsoft and Amazon. What's interesting to me is that so many businesses began, yet only the ones with promising futures snowballed into the large corporations they are today. However, there were even many promising internet start-ups that ended when the dot com bubble burst. So many people saw value in internet-based start-ups, that their stocks began to increase, only by too much. When the collapse (the dot bomb) hit, many companies outright ended, like I mentioned before, while some companies that survived (specifically Amazon and eBay) were  able to grow to stock value higher than the value during the dot com "boom", as it's called. It's interesting to see such a ground breaking invention cause such influence only to crash and burn in a relatively short time. Luckily, the world wide web and dot companies were able to stabilize into what they are today.

Job Security - Where did they all go?

In class we talked about a series of jobs that are no longer relevant due to the advances of technology and, more specifically, the internet and the web. As for the main question of where did all the workers go, I don't really have that complex of an answer. I just believe they were forced to move onto to other things. Some likely moved into the very technological replacement that put them out of work, and some probably found other jobs. This got me thinking about the one thing that many people don't consider when looking for a career path; job security. Lets say you spend 8 years studying and working with everything there is to know about newspapers right before they become obsolete because of digital newspapers. It's kind of an obscure example, but in such a case you would likely move into digital newspaper production to further your career and to stay employed. If you instead work for a retail company as a cashier that completely moves all of its sales online, it puts you in a position of loss with nowhere to transition. For people in that situation, I just assume they found other work. The best case scenario would be a career that has its demand increasing. The next best would be a career in an area that, if it were to die, would at least have transition options. The case of my second example would be the worst case scenario. Although job security is sometimes very difficult to predict, it's something that needs to be considered to avoid that worst case scenario.

eCommerce - What wouldn't I buy?

What's interesting to me is the idea that when the web first began it was amazing to see the few items we could purchase online, whereas now it is amazing to consider the few items that we CAN'T purchase online. The total flip in that sense seems to come up in the most interesting situations. Maybe it's just me, but the idea that our thinking flips as certain aspects of life become the norm intrigues me. Either way, the only items the come to mind that I wouldn't but online are the obvious ones. I don't see myself purchasing a house or a car online in almost any circumstance. Then there are some items that I would hesitate heavily before purchasing online depending on the type, such as food and medicine. Certain foods and certain types of medicines I would hesitate to purchase online. For example, I would be fine purchasing name brand over-the-counter headache medicines or maybe even general allergy medicines, but I would not purchase strong pain medications online. When I think about it, I think the only reason I wouldn't buy the first two items I listed online is simply because I can't see them in person. If I say the car or house in person before hand then I might go through with payments online but I wouldn't find and order a car or purchase a house without ever seeing in in person. I guess I just don't like the idea of paying a ton of money for so much uncertainty.

Scavenger Hunt

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w8fYK2vUkyq22VzUpBS_l607sbxZvDOwfE4uG6hZB9E/edit?usp=sharing

You can't miss it ^

There's the progress we have on the scavenger hunt in a document you can see being edited live. Does thus post need 250 words too? (͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

The Sea of Uniqueness - Thoughts On Guest Speaker Erik Hanberg

Our guest speaker on Monday the 24th spoke about his experiences with self publication and it got me thinking about using technology to publish yourself or your products. How does technology affect publication? Publicity? Advertisement? Does it help you or your product become more noticeable than others? What if the "others" all do the same? Is your product still more noticeable, or was it just placed in another sea of others? It's almost undeniable that technology and perhaps even just the internet itself can give you a huge advantage in advertisement and publicity for a book, a movie, or whatever it may be. The thing is, the effectiveness seems to decrease as a platform, such as the internet or maybe a website, grows larger. I would argue the most ideal way to publish something is by putting it on a growing platform, where that something is unique to anything else on that platform. In other words, you want to find the sweet spot where a platform is large enough that a lot of people will see it, giving you better results, but not so big that your product goes unnoticed along with many others. Unfortunately, a platform like this is rare, hard to find, and hard to predict. There's not much we can really do besides spread our advertisements everywhere we can and hope it takes off. That's why we jump on new inventions like the internet, always eager to try and get the snowball rolling. Even if you think you have something unique, if you throw it into the sea of uniqueness, is it really unique after all? Did that even make sense?